Don't You Breathe For Me
by I've-Gotta-Be-Me
Summary: It's not all heaven and hell. The good people don't always go on, sometimes they linger behind. Kurt treads the line between living and dead, taking a fascination with a boy residing in the house he last lived in. The dead lust for life just as the living long for the sweet kiss of death. All he wants is to be seen.


Blaine liked to shower when no one else was home, Kurt found out.

Not that it mattered on Kurt's part, but it made things all the more amusing. Nothing like a routine to get the living going.

It was a big, empty house. Oh, it was full of stuff – furniture everywhere, personal knick knacks, picture frames with symmetrical beaming faces, wooden floors adorned with ornate rugs, shelves overflowing with books, all the necessities - but it was still empty. He was endlessly fascinated why a boy who lived in a house with so many large rooms would feel most at home in the tiny, rectangular bathroom.

Blaine was a steamer. He liked it nice and _hot_.

He'd stand in front of the mirror and muss up his hair as the water warmed up, clothes thrown in the corner, toes making a little slapping noise against the tile. Kurt liked his laugh, he had a nice laugh – very airy and poignant; genuine. The kind you could recall late at night and curl up in like your favorite blanket. It had the smell of sanctity and a satisfaction to it that filled you up like a good meal. He laughed at himself a lot while he waited for the water to get to the right temperature: twisting his curls with his fingers and making them stick up at all ends, pulling faces at his reflection in the looking glass, running his fingers over his skin.

Blaine liked to talk to himself a lot when no one else was home – no one else that he _knew_ of. He talked to himself well, Kurt thought. It'd been so long since he'd talked to anyone. Sometimes he'd reply to Blaine's witty remarks under his breath and pretend they were having a conversation. But Blaine never answered his questions; never looked at him.

So Kurt just leaned against the bathroom wall, watching Blaine scrunch up his face and give himself new hair-dos. Sometimes the mirror would fog up prematurely and Blaine would use his pinky finger to trace little pictures in the murky corners. Kurt would run his own pinky finger across his lips, always wondering, always finding himself wanting to be a mirror if only for a minute.

Presently, Blaine had been musing aloud about how weird mirrors were. He'd looked into his own eyes for a little too long and freaked himself out, feeling like his reflection was an entire other person living in an alternate universe, forever trapped behind a panel of glass.

Kurt knew this because Blaine had said, "What if my reflection is just another person who just happens to look like me and who's living in a world that's the exact opposite of mine, forever trapped in the mirror?"

_If only life were that simple_, Kurt thought to himself from where he sat on the floor.

Blaine hurriedly looked away from his reflection, telling himself he was being ridiculous and smiling, but he continued stealing glances at his own hazel eyes every few seconds as if checking to make sure the person in the mirror hadn't walked off somewhere. Kurt could hear his heart racing from the excitement and fear of thinking new thoughts. There was a little fear in Blaine – he liked that – just not the right kind of fear. Blaine put his hand up to chest-level, palm facing the mirror. He felt stupid – he said as much – but still he did it.

Kurt appeared on the other side of the mirror, with all the insulation and pipes jutting every which direction. Every wonder what makes a mirror stay on the wall? You don't want to know. There was absolutely no space to spare, but Kurt was versatile. He'd always been good at the going-through-walls stuff. From there, it was like Blaine was standing in front of him, reaching out to _him_. He put his hand to the grimy backing of the mirror, pressing his fingertips into it until it almost hurt. He couldn't remember what pain felt like.

Blaine's hand hovered, not quite touching the mirror yet, fingertips lining up perfectly with their reflections – with Kurt's hand. He pressed against the surface of the mirror and for a split second it was almost like they were touching. Kurt willed for Blaine to feel him from his end, but then Blaine started, pulling his hand away from the mirror like it was _too_ cold. He laughed at himself and turned away to walk into the shower.

Kurt was waiting for him as he stepped in. It's not like he took up space or was a nuisance, but as a general rule, he kept himself in the corner. Just looking.

It wasn't a sexual thing. Of course, Blaine was undressed with nothing but his skin and blood to hide behind – such flimsy armor - but Kurt wasn't there to check him out or cop a nonexistent feel. The dead didn't have much libido, he'd found out quite a while back. When there's no blood, there's no rushing of it anywhere for any reason.

Fascination, though, is immortal.

And apparently so was loneliness. Kurt wanted to sob because _here was a boy_ who was all flesh and veins and possibilities – perpetually changing and growing and _living_ – so close. _So close_. He wanted to say that they were not so different, save the matter of air whooshing in and out of the lungs. They could be friends. Kurt hadn't had any friends before, but it'd be nice to have one now.

But there's only so much you can do.

Appearance-wise, Kurt and his clothes were soaked to the skin. But water clinging to the human form was a bodily parameter. It was whatever Kurt allowed it to be – and right now he wanted to _feel_ human. He didn't want the droplets to run off of his out-of-date button down and jeans like they weren't real – like _he_ wasn't real. He wanted to feel the water on his pale skin. Wanted to feel the heat and the stickiness; to feel the water sloshing around in his shoes and matting his hair against his skull. It wasn't lasting, only an illusion. But it was a nice illusion.

He ghosted a hand across Blaine's chest as the boy tipped his head back and ran his hands through his hair, eyes closed and lips parted, breathing through the stream of liquid. Kurt stood right in front of him, in a space that would be unacceptable socially. But he wasn't afraid. Why should the imperceptible fear the visible? He never touched, just kept his one-inch buffer.

How simple it would be to appear now, at that exact moment when Blaine's eyes snapped open after he wiped the water from them. There he would be, fingers still covering his nose and raking the skin of his cheeks and he'd see Kurt with a lazy, yet spellbound look on his face – head tilted to the side, hat askew, and hand reaching out for the gratifying slickness of damp skin. He was sure that Blaine would see sadness there as well – an unsalvageable grief, and an insatiable longing. _That_ kind of pain was in the mind; the part of you isn't buried in the ground when it's all said and done.

He didn't appear. But he wanted to. Oh, did he want to. But he'd become fond of sharing the shower with someone. Seeing as how he didn't need to bathe, it was a nice excuse to come stand in the tub. But there was something to be said about standing there with someone when they were at their most vulnerable - closest to their own truth. It was a good way to really get to someone.

There was also Blaine's voice. If he listened to it long enough, Kurt almost felt like he could feel the life thrumming in his decomposed muscles again. He felt he could breathe in the happiness, fill his lungs with it, and circulate the freedom through his veins; soak up the energy of his resolve and live off of the richness of his tone until there was no such thing as death or departure or hurt. It was with that voice that he became strong again – more than just a shade of his previous body. God, he felt _whole_ again when that boy opened his mouth.

Sometimes he felt so old, bones creaking like the floorboards and aching with stagnancy like the air lurking in all the rooms. It was hard not to feel like just a part of the house – like furniture that gets swept along from owner to owner. But with Blaine there, he felt like a person. He felt like he didn't want to blend in.

It wasn't always a show-stopping performance with poses and arm gestures. There wasn't always an imaginary mic or the drawing of the shower curtain so his imaginary audience could applaud him. Sometimes it was no louder than a whisper – not even a proper song, just the smattering of notes around the lips and changing rate of breath; pressed narrow against the roof of the mouth or loud and open, spilling around the edges teeth. The small space magnified Blaine's voice until the tiles in the shower vibrated with it. Kurt liked to lean his cheek against the tiny marble squares and feel the transfer of sound seep into his skin.

Blaine leaned over to get something off the floor just outside the short walls of the tub, half-disappearing behind the shower curtain – a shampoo bottle he'd knocked down with his dance moves, no doubt – and Kurt's eyes were transfixed on his legs. He watched the rivulets of water methodically stemming from the crevice of his hip all the way down his thighs, swimming over his knees, and trailing down his shins to his toes, where they dripped off onto the floor. Kurt toed the forming puddles with the nose of his sneakers, enjoying the warmth.

On the other side of the shower, Blaine was still searching for something. He screwed up his mouth in thought and then moved to peek out of the shower curtain on Kurt's side. Kurt had never felt so small as he shrank into his corner of the shower like he _was_ just part of the wall. It's not like Blaine could feel him anyways, but it was the principle of the matter. If they came into contact, it'd just make it that much more tempting to slip into vision; that much more of a possibility that Kurt would want it.

His arm was a few inches from Kurt's mouth, and another small stream of water was running across the curve of his elbow and onto Kurt's chest. If Kurt was capable of breathing, he wouldn't have been at that moment. His lungs that hadn't worked in almost a century felt heavy in his chest, instinct telling them to constrict even though doing so wouldn't actually have any physical effect.

Then there was soap everywhere. Blaine was covered in this sheen of white, clean smelling bubbles in no time; tilting his head forward to scrub his neck, sending water running through his hair and onto the cuffs of Kurt's jeans. Blaine took a step towards where Kurt stood at the back of the tub and put his leg on the ledge. Kurt shut his eyes reflexively, but eventually took a peek, smirking to himself. Blaine cleaned his legs very deliberately. Kurt had just enough time to scoot away from the corner before Blaine switched legs, hiking the other one up onto the opposite lip of the tub - the one connected to the wall - and leaned down to do the same thing.

Kurt let out a little gasp because Blaine's lips were _right there_. He could feel the puff of Blaine's breath skating across his open mouth as the boy continued to sing a quiet song. Kurt couldn't even bring himself to be amused by the fact that Blaine was vocalizing all the instrumental parts - the drums and the guitar solos especially - he was so focused on Blaine's lips, moving and smiling, parting and closing. If Kurt wasn't what he was, they'd be kissing. He drew in a shaky breath that was absolutely unnecessary in every sense of the word.

It didn't help.

At that, Blaine inclined his head towards Kurt with a cute, quizzical expression. Kurt's features quickly moved to mimmick it. Of all his years being in this house, that had never happened before. His hands were burning, his mind chanting, "_Touch him, touch him. See what else happens_..." But he bit his lip and shook his head. He wouldn't do it - he _couldn't_ do it.

Up until that moment, he hadn't thought the dead could fear anything. Least of all the living.

* * *

Blaine felt like someone was watching him.

Of course, this just sounded self-absorbed to his own ears. Sometimes he liked to_ pretend _someone was watching him so that he acted better than he normally would. He'd imagine he was on a television show, the nation watching his every move and judging the very way he breathed the air. He'd like to think of himself as this smart, witty guy, trying out his intellectual material on a perpetual audience. But of course, it was always an act; a fantasy.

But who was he kidding? No one would ever take an interest in him. He was boring.

But sometimes he was so _sure_ of it. It was one thing to _feel_ like someone was watching you and another to _know_ someone was watching you. Eyes held their own kind of weight; they clung, they searched, they scathed.

It was everywhere. Sometimes he'd be sitting at the table, doing homework, with his back facing the expanse of an empty room and he'd feel someone hovering over his shoulder. When he turned around, there was nothing, but every time he turned back, the feeling would resurface. Everytime he tried not to look and told himself he was being dumb, it'd intensify - as if his denial gave the lurker more of a presence. Only there was no one. Sometimes he'd be lying on the sofa reading a book, turned on his side to face the back of the couch, and he'd keep being distracted by movement at the foot of his bed. It always turned out to be a shadow or a piece of furniture.

No one was ever there.

Sometimes his heart would beat a little faster when he closed the door to the bathroom, locking himself in. The hallways were so long and hollow - someone could be hiding anywhere. He didn't know if he was scared of the literal threat of a stalker or robber, or something else, but it made him uneasy. He preferred the small rooms, like the bathroom or his bedroom - everything within sight and accounted for. The shower curtain pulled back exposed the entire room. He'd know he was truly alone. It was both comforting and depressing.

That's why he liked to take his time in there. It wasn't often he got time to spend by himself. There was no pressure - it's not like anyone was watching him or waiting for him to trip up. The only person judging him was his reflection, and even that was a part of him. He liked to joke with himself that he'd only grown as a musician as much as he had because of the hours he spent alone in the bathroom under the stream of water - just singing. That's why when the house was empty was best, because he could sing the same song over and over again, as softly or loudly as he wanted, without worrying about someone becoming annoyed with him. He could sing loud enough to wake the dead or soft enough to lull a baby to sleep. It was a nice kind of freedom.

When he pointed this out to himself, he thought he heard a noise by his feet. But when he turned to look with a frown, there was nothing staring back at him but his crumpled heap of clothes.

"You're losing it," he muttered to himself, slapping his face.

This amused him for a few minutes as his opened his mouth and patted different stretches of skin to make different noises. He must've been really tired if he was a) seeing things and b) playing with his own face.

But when he was in the shower with the curtain drawn, he felt it _again_. He was on the second verse of his favorite shower song, and was almost through the "repeat" part of the "rinse and repeat" section on the shampoo bottle, when he felt it.

Someone was watching him.

His head was tipped back into the spray of the shower and he was massaging the suds out of his hair, eyes closed to avoid the burning of soap that childhood had reamed into his memory time and time again. His heart was pounding in his chest and he could just _feel_ someone standing in front of him. He was filled with this sudden horror that if he opened his eyes after wiping away the excess water there'd be someone standing there in front of him. Right in front of him.

But that was stupid, wasn't it? There was no one there. He would _know_ if someone else was in the shower with him, for heaven's sake. People didn't just _wander_ into other people's showers to say hello.

All the same, he was sure. He took a step backwards, eyes still closed and fingers still clamped over his eyelids mid-swipe. His chest felt tight and he let out a breath, knowing holding it would only make him feel worse. He chanced it, peeking through a few fingers, already feeling a yell build up from his stomach.

No one. Nothing.

He was panting and the water had run nearly cold, sloshing over his shoulders and down his sides. His eyes searched the narrow expanse of the tub. There was no one, but he'd been so _sure_, hadn't he? He stared straight ahead, eyes seeing nothing, but drawn by something. He kept looking even though his brain kept sending the message to his eyes to look away. _Just look away._ But they couldn't.

Finally they were released and he blinked rapidly, shaking his head. He'd just zoned out, he told himself. It was no big deal, it happened all the time - especially when he was trying to study for a test. He went back to his shower and began washing his body, using plenty of soap. He turned up the temperature on the water as he did so, letting it work out the tension in his back from his petty panic attack. He rolled his head to the left, letting the water do its thing as he worked from his shoulders down to his fingertips.

He didn't feel like leaning down to clean his legs, especially since he still hadn't shaken the feeling of someone else's presence. He peeked out of the side of the shower curtain closest to him, mostly so he could scope out the tiny bathroom. Of course, his only companions were his discarded clothing items. They weren't very intimidating. After a quick look out of the other side, he decided to rest his food on the edge of the tub and wash his leg. When he switched legs, he heard something.

It was hard to decipher over the rush of water, but it was something. He knew it was something. God, it sounded so_ close_, but it was too short-lived to be identifiable. It was like a gasp or a breath - so short, but definitely there. He turned his head reflexively so that his ear was closer to the source...Only the _was_ no source.

It was so frustrating, feeling like you were losing your mind.

* * *

It was so frustrating, flirting with the line between living and not-so-living.

Because you were _real_ - only you weren't. You were _there_ - only you weren't. Mostly because you weren't allowed to be. How do you explain to someone that you're rooted in a certain place by something so twisted and awful? How do you explain appearing and disappearing at the most inconvenient of times? How do you attempt to divulge the feeling of being drawn to your polar opposite: a vibrant life source. It's the most cruel kind of trick God can play.

And there was the torture. The agonizing ripping of soul from body, like tearing a useless piece of trash, and shredding thereof into strips and pieces. There was the burning and the hatred; the overwhelming confusion. There was freedom and ensnarement. But there was longing; so much desire that it was a dull ache that almost served as a heartbeat, thudding in the corpse. Lusting after responsive, growing, sentient beings and coveting them, hoping and begging to be taken away. Life had such a delicious appeal once it was taken.

Kurt just wanted someone to talk to - was that so hard to understand? That's why he didn't want to appear; he wanted to be _discovered. _If Blaine stumbled upon him himself, then it wouldn't come as such a shock. But that wall between the living world and the whatever-he-was world wasn't easy to permeate. It had to be breeched from both sides. On his side, it was as thin as a sheet of paper. On Blaine's it might as well have been a concrete wall filled with cadavers and cement.

So he hung back, leaning against the wall as the razorblade in Blaine's hand glinted in the light. This part of the routine amused Kurt as well. Blaine seemed to think his chest had excessive hair, so every now and then, he'd shave it.

Kurt took a step forward and jumped up on the counter of the sink. Blaine turned his head in Kurt's direction, just for a second, before going back to his de-hairing ritual._ Hmm_, he thought. _Maybe that wall's thinning out._

The blade glided down over and over again until more and more skin was peeking out. It wasn't an excessive amount of hair, and if Kurt could talk to Blaine, he would've told him so. See? He could be helpful.

The whole thing slowed down in his mind's eye until it was madness. Kurt could hear each individual fiber of hair being bent and trimmed. He could hear the dull scrape of skin and the blades looked too sharp for their own good. It was much too much. In a fit of curiosity, he couldn't stifle the urge to meddle. Before he could rationalize his way out of it, he reached out and touched Blaine's hand.

Well, he _assumed_ he touched Blaine's hand. He couldn't actually _feel_ the transfer of heat between the two or the soft press of skin, but he knew he was doing it. He also knew because Blaine's mouth dropped open and the hand holding the razor slipped. The angle of the blade was off and the skin opened up. Kurt could practically see each individual cell rupturing apart from one another. A delicate tenril of dark blood rushed to fill the exposed wound and journeyed downwards, dividing his chest directly in half.

Blaine looked shocked. Kurt was frightened - but the kind of fright that thinly veils excitement. He hovered a finger over a thick droplet of blood experimentally. The proximity alone made it cling to Kurt's skin. If Blaine was surprised that some of his platelets had disappeared right off his skin, he didn't show it. He was just staring at the reflection of the jagged stretch of blood for a moment. He shook his head and grabbed a paper towel, clearing up the minor mess. It didn't bleed much, so Kurt didn't feel _too_ bad. It was educational after all.

He left, appearing outside of the bathroom. He'd decided that he'd freaked out one person enough for one evening. He heard Blaine's tentative voice resume its paceless, unstructured song. He pressed an ear to the door, feeling the way the door hummed when Blaine held a note long enough. He could deal with this. For a little while, at least.

Blaine emerged from the bathroom about half an hour later, looking both ways down the hallway before stepping out. He looked wary, continuously checking over his shoulders for anything unusual - as if he expected someone to just pop out in front of him. As if.

His towel was tucked around his waist and he was leaving little vaguely footprint-shaped puddles on the floor behind him. He hadn't even bothered drying off properly before fleeing the restroom. Kurt felt a sliver of shame for about half a second, but shrugged it off. Worse things had happened to _him_ in that bathroom.

But there wasn't only fear in Blaine Anderson, Kurt knew. There was loneliness. Inner-desolation and heartache, just like his. Their seclusions were soulmates to one another, matched in every way. There was a part of Blaine that wanted to _know_. That he_ needed_ after all this time.

It was more than Kurt could stand. He'd been alone for so long. Lost for so many years. He didn't even remember what his own voice really sounded like - in rage, in elation, in sadness. The thing about hopelessness was that it did not age, did not change or morph with the years. If anything, it only grew worse until it engulfed everything and everyone near it. Kurt needed saving. No, he needed _someone_. And for the first time in the longest time, he saw the chance to live again.

God, it made him so _angry_. Why did the living have to be so ignorant? Why did they have to be caught up in their own worlds and beliefs, shunning anything that gave them an unpleasant feeling! The dead do not dwell in darkness and hatred - they, too, reach for the sunlight.

Blaine had reached the doorway of his room, getting ready to slam the door and not come out until someone came home and called him down for dinner. Fear was a potluck dish: best served hot and shared. There was an unplaceable anger in Blaine, too. Kurt could smell it on him, barely outstenched by the pungent presence of fear.

Kurt fell to his knees and tore at his hair. He didn't know when he'd started crying, but he was. The dripping tears mixed in with the puddles Blaine had left on the floor, and Blaine looked. He could hear the pitter patter of water on water on wood, probably heard the thunk of knees on the floor. He _almost_ saw, Kurt could tell, but he was pulling away. No, _tearing_ away. Tomorrow the chasm might be more impossible than it'd been before. An endless pit of hatred and despair for both. If he wasn't already dead, the wretchedness of it all would've killed him right then and there.

"_LOOK AT ME!_" he begged.

The power of his own voice caught him off guard and he slapped a hand over his mouth. It slipped every time he took in stuttering breaths - breaths that did his lungs absolutely no good. _Pain was in the mind_, he told himself. _In the mind, in the mind, in the mind. _His palms dug into the skin of his forehead and he sat back on his feet. The dreamlike feeling of convalescence throbbed and coiled in the pit of his stomach, howling as it slowly died, like so much of him already had.

_Someone_, he cried. _Someone. I need someone._

He shook his head. "..._Please_."

It was barely audible to his own ears, so he doubted that Blaine had heard it.

But the boy's eyes were wide and he was still standing there in the doorframe, looking at the wood floors. His eyebrows went up for a moment, then furrowed together in confusion. He took a step foward, hand outstretched of its own accord, but then he thought better of it. He shook his head almost imperceptibly, like he was, what...disgusted?

"_No_," Kurt whimpered. "No, wait - "

Blaine turned his back and closed the door, leaving Kurt alone in this God-forsaken house once more.

* * *

_A/N: Look, I wrote a short thing because of reasons!_

_I just have a lot of feelings about the un/dead, okay? I don't even know. So many creepy feelings._

_I feel bad because really the only writing I'm doing right now is academic writing, but this afternoon I had an idea and I was like, "Hey, I'm not going to bed until it's out of me." I hope you guys found it interesting. I had fun at least (:_

**_Review and leave me thoughts, m'dears!_**


End file.
